a. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to computer and communication systems and more particularly to delivery of electronic mail (email) and other forms of electronic messages over the public switched and wireless telephone networks.
b. Background Art
Telephone communication and digital information exchange including electronic mail are two common methods of communicating, using two seemingly independent technological disciplines. With the recent advances in information technology and telecommunications, the components for implementing systems that serve these two areas are beginning to overlap. However, using devices from one area to serve in the other remains a product development challenge.
The market need for a solution to provide telephone communication and digital information exchange over a single user device can be ascertained by considering the great many products that have been introduced and purchased over the last few years. The inherent complexities in the creation of a coherent solution are also evident by the difficulty of use, the high rate of failure, and the proprietary nature of the available solutions. These complexities result in difficult-to-use, costly solutions, and product offerings that are expensive to integrate into enterprise information systems.
Traditional approaches to enable an individual (1) to receive email messages and other forms of electronic notification over any telephone, (2) to redirect these notifications and associated electronic documents to a different destination (such as a fax machine), and (3) to respond to these messages, include defining an operational domain within which this service is available, thereby restricting and limiting the usefulness of the solution. An operational domain may be an email domain, a telephone network, or a community of professionals who work for an enterprise, or a department within an enterprise. These boundaries are adopted to simplify the problem of implementing a coherent system for voice communication and information delivery and access in systems that rely on central control or systems that are provided by a single vendor.